How to Save a Life
by ElizaV
Summary: This fic was written for the “I Heart Rogan Random Rogan Songfic Challenge”, hosted by JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo. Inspired by “How to Save a Life” by The Fray. Marie finds out something disturbing and confronts Logan about it. ROGAN


Disclaimer: You say Marvel and I don't answer. It just goes to show I'm not Marvel. If I was, I would gladly answer to the name and claim ownership of X-Men. And I'm not a recorded singer, So I don't own the song "How to Save a Life" by the Fray.

Author's Note: This fic was written for the "I Heart Rogan Random Rogan Songfic Challenge", hosted by JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo. The song which inspired this fic was "How to Save a Life" by The Fray, and I believe I really lucked out with this song. Lyrics are in italics.

--------------------------------------------------------

I knew something had been different for some time. He had become more distant in my old age. It had always been one of my fears. I always feared he would find someone younger, someone who looked more his own age once I began to grey. Each grey hair was a reminder of how different we were, each silver strand was a strike against us; a microscopic reminder of way our relationship should not work.

_Let him know that you know best,_

_'Cause after all you do know best._

_Try to slip past his defense,_

_Without granting innocence._

_Lay down a list of what is wrong._

_The things you've told him all along._

_Pray to god he hears you._

_And I pray to god he hears you and,_

"Logan, we need to talk." I told him as he walked through the door to our bedroom. His brown eyes met mine and he raised his eyebrow in question, leaving a temporary wrinkle in his normally un-creased forehead. "Sit down, it's just a talk." I tried to hide any nervousness my voice held, I tried to make it seem as if it is over something stupid, like how he always seems to leave the lid off the milk when he puts it back in the fridge. He smiled at the way my eyes softened and I smiled back at him. Even on the days I cannot stand him, on days when I want to hate him more than anything else, even more than Erik or the devil, I can't.

"What is it Marie?" He asked me.

"I..umm…Lo--"

"Cut the crap Marie. You called me and had me drive in from a mission so you could talk to me. Summers was not happy, especially since it was the first time out for some of the newer members." Jacob Summers could be a task master at times, taking after his father in some aspects. Jacob had been leading the X-Men for ten years now, after Ororo had passed on and Logan realized he was too short tempered for the job. I did have my reasons, reasons even Jacob would understand.

I turned away from him and made my way to the dresser. I opened the top drawer and found what I was looking for underneath an old scarf of mine. I held the small scrap in my hand, holding it like one would their last possession, as I made my way back to the bed where Logan was now seated. "Who is she?" I asked shakily as I held out the picture in my hand; a tattered photograph with Logan and a beautiful young brunette, one with hair down to the small of her back and eyes of emeralds. He held her like he once held me, his arms wrapped around her shoulders, his lips to her forehead, her eyes closed, and her lips smiling.

The expression of caring he showed in the image contrasted greatly with the look of being caught in the act the downcast eyes and sunken angles his face currently bore.

_Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend,_

_Somewhere along in the bitterness._

_And I would have stayed up with you all night,_

_Had I known how to save a life._

It wasn't the fact that she was young, or the way she could move, it was how much she reminded me of Marie that got me interested. Her hair was the same shade of Marie's when I first met her. She was the same height and her face looked similar from a distance. At first, I thought it was her, and then I remembered she was at home and took a closer look. The biggest difference was her eyes. She had green eyes which seemed more like a feature Marie would possess; eyes which were uncommon, but not the stereotype of beauty, like Marie.

Marie was so up front in my mind the entire time, yet I still was unfaithful; I let myself fall back passed all my instincts of faithfulness and love the Wolverine possessed, and let the old broken Logan I had once been, a person never tied down, take control. And I was a train wreck. I didn't know how to stop or slow down or how to go on without this green-eyed figure, or be honest with Marie, my wife and mother of my children and confess it all to her. I did not know.

I had wanted to end it all. Half of me screamed that this young woman was not Marie, that she was at home in our bed, and the other half still longed for my youthful Marie.

_Let him know that you know best,_

_'Cause after all you do know best._

_Try to slip past his defense,_

_Without granting innocence._

_Lay down a list of what is wrong._

_The things you've told him all along._

_Pray to God he hears you._

_And I pray to God he hears you and,_

His silence was his conviction . Not that the picture was not condemning enough, but pictures could be cropped and images misinterpreted; but his silence, it was something which could not be explained away.

"You cheated on me! Logan, how could you? You loved me, you MARRIED me and settled down. For forty years now you have stayed with me and our five children, and…" I started to cry and my words became broken. "We, I… I just don't understand. Or maybe I do. She is… young and beautiful." I just kept sobbing. What he had done, or was doing, was wrong, but I could almost defend him. Our life was not easy. No one understood the age difference it seemed. At first it was me being way too young for him. We had a few years when no one brought it up because we looked nearly the same age. Then I started to look older, which was becoming more common. Now I was sixty and he barely even looked forty. I looked more like his mother, and the children we shared looked more like his siblings than his offspring.

_Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend,_

_Somewhere along in the bitterness._

_And I would have stayed up with you all night,_

_Had I known how to save a life._

I could read her brown eyes and they told me she knew it all. She knew my reasons and my intentions. She probably even knew every caress, every touch. I also realized by the break in her voice that I had irreparably hurt her. No amount of my healing power could have helped. I had damaged our life. Things were strained enough already, they always were with us, even when I wasn't a screw up. A cheater. A bastard. Unfaithful.

_As he begins to raise his voice,_

_You lower yours and grant him one last choice._

_"Drive until you lose the road,_

_Or break with the ones you've followed."_

_He will do one of two things._

_He will admit to everything,_

_Or he'll say he's just not the same,_

_And you'll begin to wonder why you came._

"I'm sorry Marie." Is all he could say. It was really all he needed to say. I knew everything. I knew how I had aged and fallen apart. I knew how my interest in some of the physical things had waned, how my hands had become unsure, and my knees wouldn't let my go with him as I pleased. "I'll, I'll go now." He told me as he stood up and walked out the door. I was paralyzed, even my breathing stopped, as he walked out the door. I knew he was sorry, but I knew he still was not ready to face me in order to make things work. There was nothing I could do. I was left alone again and I wondered why I had even bothered to say anything to him. I could not ignore his cheating, but I also could not go on without him.

_Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend,_

_Somewhere along in the bitterness._

_And I would have stayed up with you all night,_

_Had I known how to save a life._

I decided to leave because I couldn't put her through knowing the details. She didn't need to know about the day I met her. She didn't need to know how she had captured my attention and didn't make it home until the next morning. She didn't need to know how I caressed her skin and made love to her. She also didn't need to know how this had went on for months, or that despite all the time, I still couldn't bear to speak the young woman's name. Maybe I could trick my mind and my heart if I never spoke her name aloud and imagined this was just a young Marie with green eyes. But every night I went home and was reminded of the differences. Marie never pulled back from me when I was upset. Marie's touch soothed me unlike anything, while Anna Belle's never did.

_Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend,_

_Somewhere along in the bitterness._

_And I would have stayed up with you all night,_

_Had I known how to save a life._

_How to save a life._

_How to save a life._

But the sad part is the first thing I did was run to Anna Belle. I sought her comfort for some reason. Or maybe it wasn't really comfort I was seeking, just a place to amplify my misery. Over the years of pain and healing, I found emotional hurt especially interesting. It hurt unlike anything else and you never truly healed. I could not possess physical scars, but my mind and soul had many.

_Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend,_

_Somewhere along in the bitterness._

_And I would have stayed up with you all night,_

_Had I known how to save a life._

I stayed away for a month. I didn't return to Marie and she didn't try to find me. When I would leave, and I left a lot, Marie never would look for me. She knew I would eventually return, but not until I was ready. One morning I woke up and I realized where I had went wrong in the past year: I kept running away from her. I kept forgetting how much she needed me. I always thought she would be better off without me, even if it did kill me, but I finally realized it killed her when I wasn't with her just as much as it did me when she wasn't near me.

I had not choice or want of one when I realized just how screwed up my thinking had been. I drove all night to get back to our small cabin just south of the Canadian border. We had not been there in years, but I knew she would go there to seek solitude. I didn't call while I drove or even knock on the door when I arrived. I walked in and found Marie lying on our bed, the one on which we had conceived more than one of our children. I scooped her up into my arms and let my tears beg and plead for her forgiveness as her tears washed me clean. She saved my life just as many times as I had saved hers.

_Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend,_

_Somewhere along in the bitterness._

_And I would have stayed up with you all night,_

_Had I known how to save a life._

_How to save a life._

_How to save a life_


End file.
